


in the moment we're lost & found

by inconocible



Series: swimming in sevens, slow dancing in seconds [1]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Ahsoka Tano Needs a Hug, Force Bonds, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kanan Jarrus: Space dad, Literally I'm watching this series for the first time idk what canon is but here's a fic ANYWAY, Or Is It?, Post-Episode: s01e15 Fire Across the Galaxy, That's Not How The Force Works, What is canon anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 06:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13094355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inconocible/pseuds/inconocible
Summary: “Did you ever take a padawan?” Kanan asks a few minutes later, breaking the increasingly comfortable silence between them.“No,” Ahsoka says. “I don’t think I ever could.”





	in the moment we're lost & found

**Author's Note:**

> & i just wanna be by your side,  
> if these wings could [fly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBcwEphCZs)

“I understand, but this is an emergency!”

Ahsoka reaches out thoughtfully, padding down the empty, half-darkened hallway, following the neon brightness of Ezra’s panicked mind that roused her from her bed until she is able to distantly hear him, arguing with the medic on duty. As she gets closer, the conversation grows louder.

“I assure you, if there were any emergency in my med bay, I would be attending to it,” the medic replies wearily.

“You don’t get it,” Ezra fires back sharply. “My master _needs_ me, he’s calling for me, just let me in!”

“Young man, I’ve told you, visiting hours are--” the medic begins. Ahsoka can feel the medic’s frustration tick ever higher as she rounds the corner.

“Master Tano,” Ezra exclaims, cutting the medic off in the middle of her rebuttal.

Shortly after coming back aboard the _Ghost_ , Kanan had collapsed in a faint, exhausted under the weight of torture and his duel with the Inquisitor. Ezra had reluctantly admitted his own bruised ribs, dislocated shoulder, and broken wrist from his fall during the duel. (“I’m totally fine, it’s just a hairline fracture!” had not worked on Hera in the slightest.) Both had been whisked to _Phoenix Home_ ’s medbay, but while Ezra had been quickly released back to Hera with a brace on his wrist and a sling on his arm and a bacta patch on his ribs, the medics had decided to keep Kanan, at least until he came back to consciousness. Ahsoka has barely seen either of the two in the past 36 hours, leaving them alone to rest.

“It’s Ahsoka,” she corrects Ezra, propping one hand on her hip. Ezra and the medic both just stare at her for a beat. “Well?” she says. “I could hear you from across the ship, Ezra Bridger. What’s going on?”

Ezra swallows, crossing his uninjured right arm over his sling-bound left across his chest and pulling what Ahsoka suspects is Kanan’s old zippered sweatshirt tighter around himself. He takes a breath, but the annoyed medic is faster. “This young fellow seems to think visiting hours can be bent to suit his whims,” she says. “He claims that Jarrus is in distress, but—“

“He _is_ ,” Ezra cuts in, glaring up at Ahsoka, his breaths coming too fast, bouncing slightly on the balls of his socked feet. “He is, Ahsoka, I _swear_ it, I can _hear_ _him_.” Ezra looks down at his feet, then back up earnestly to meet Ahsoka’s gaze. “He needs me,” Ezra whispers, his voice nearly cracking.

Ahsoka closes her eyes, reaches out in the Force, and finds Kanan asleep, though fretfully, likely in the throes of a nightmare. She can almost touch the edge of Kanan and Ezra’s bond, stronger and more visible in the Force than likely either of them are aware, with both of them injured and exhausted and too unshielded. The bond thrums with need and fear and pain, and Ahsoka isn’t sure what belongs to who. She boosts her mental shields, tries to wrap them around all three of them. She wonders how unshielded a Jedi needs to be before other, darker Force-sensitive beings can sense them.

“Please,” Ezra insists, and Ahsoka sighs.

Opening her eyes, she turns sharply to the medic. “Let us in,” she says, her tone brooking no argument. The medic sets her lips in a fine, harsh line of disagreement. “Please,” Ashoka adds, echoing Ezra’s plea in a more polite tone. “I’ll look after them both.” Being in the same room with both of them, letting them soothe one another, both of these things will make it easier for her to temporarily shield them in addition to herself, she thinks.

The medic scowls, but turns on her heel. “As you say, Master Jedi,” she answers icily, punching in the passcode to the door before disappearing into her office.

Ezra starts forward, but Ahsoka puts her hand out, grasping his uninjured shoulder. “Slow down, Ezra,” she says, perhaps a bit too harshly, for he flinches as they walk across the empty medical bay. “How much has Kanan taught you about Force bonds?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know, a bit? We can feel each other in the Force.” He strains against her gentle hold, heading for Kanan like a homing beacon. “Enough to know where each other is,” he adds. “That’s how I found him on the Inquisitor’s ship.”

“But have you learned to truly communicate through your bond?” So much he doesn’t know, Ahsoka thinks.

“Feelings, some,” Ezra answers thoughtfully. “But not like this – I’ve never heard him like this, so clearly.”

“Hmm,” Ahsoka muses, sending tendrils of calm down to Ezra. “If he’s communicating with you through your bond, he’s probably close to waking up now.”

Ahsoka pulls back the curtain surrounding Kanan’s bed when they reach it, and feels Ezra’s shock before she hears his gasp. Kanan’s face is pale with dark, bruised circles under his eyes, hooked up to several machines, frowning in his sleep. He looks, frankly, like shit, and Ahsoka recalls the feeling of seeing someone invincible reduced to mortality, a vision of Anakin, years ago, holding Obi-Wan’s seemingly-lifeless body on the pavement of Coruscant blooming suddenly before her.

“Master?” Ezra asks tentatively, breaking through Ahsoka’s thoughts. “Here I am.”

Another vision, this time of Anakin curled up in his bed and refusing to speak to her in the days between Obi-Wan’s fake death and fake funeral. The beginning of the end, she now knows.

“Call him through your bond,” Ahsoka says, forcefully pushing away the ghost of the darkness that had enveloped her in the days she and Anakin hunted who they thought was Rako Hardeen. Why this memory, at this moment, she doesn’t know. It troubles her, distracts her.

“I – I don’t know how,” Ezra says. “I’ve never—“

“Yes, you do,” Ahsoka answers, steering him to the left side of Kanan’s bedside, remembering – perched on the edge of Anakin’s bed, her hand on his arm, pleading with him across their bond to get up.

“Sit,” she instructs, pushing him gently down to the side of Kanan’s bed and crossing the foot of the bed to sit in a chair on the opposite side – the chair Hera warmed most of the afternoon, she knows. “Center yourself,” Ahsoka says, doing the same, showing as well as telling Ezra what to do, trying to banish the painful memories that have presented themselves to her. Across Kanan’s body, Ezra closes his eyes and blows a breath out through his mouth.

Kanan’s brow knits. “No,” he grits out, grinding his teeth in his sleep, flinching, his face twisting with the phantom of pain.

“Kanan, I’m here,” Ezra pleads, grabbing Kanan’s hand.

“Reach out, Ezra,” Ahsoka tells him. “The bond between a master and a padawan is a sacred thing. Sacred, and unique to each pair, and, these days, exceedingly rare. No matter how far apart, your master will never leave you.” Another vision of Anakin appears in Ahsoka’s mind, this time laughing, running his war-calloused hand over her beads, the warmth of the steadfast comfort and surety of their bond during the height of the war – Ahsoka shakes her head clear of the vision, refocusing on her projection of calm protection over Ezra and Kanan.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Ezra says, radiating uncertainty and anxiety.

Kanan thrashes in his sleep again, wrenching his hand from Ezra’s grasp. “No,” he mumbles, “no, no. Ezra!”

Ezra turns frantic eyes to Ahsoka. “The darkness, it’s -- I don’t know what to do,” he insists, breathing hard to the point that Ahsoka worries briefly he’s going to hyperventilate.

“Concentrate. Reach out with your feelings,” Ahsoka says firmly. “Let go. You will know.”

A few long, silent moments pass. Ezra’s breathing, Kanan’s struggle in his dream, and the blips and beeps of the medical monitors attached to him echo loudly in the quiet room.

“Ezra,” Kanan croaks, suddenly. “Hey, kiddo.” Ahsoka feels the moment Ezra startles from his concentration, and she even startles briefly in spite of herself at the depth of emotion she feels surging from Kanan, from Ezra. “What are you doing up in the middle of the night cycle?” Kanan asks, sleepy and confused. He pushes up onto an elbow, runs a hand lightly over Ezra’s sling-bound arm. “I heard you calling me. You okay?”

“Kanan, Master,” Ezra answers, his breaths coming faster than before. “ _I_ heard _you_ calling _me_ , I felt that you were in pain, I thought –“

“Oh, Ezra,” Kanan sighs. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was having a really bad dream,” he admits, “but I didn’t mean to project it onto you.”

“You were calling for me,” Ezra says again. “You were in pain.”

“Yeah,” Kanan says. “Yeah, I.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m not going to lie to you. I was – dreaming about losing you, my Padawan. And,” he adds, his voice trailing off into wistfulness, sadness, “my master.” He sighs.

“I – I saw her,” Ezra gasps, his focus intensely on Kanan, his face hidden from Ahsoka’s view by his hair, his whole body trembling visibly. “You were alone, and hurting, in the dark, and you _needed us_ ,” he insists, his breath hitching in a way that sounds suspiciously to Ahsoka like a sob, “so I came.”

“Ezra,” Kanan whispers. He catches Ezra’s chin between his right thumb and forefinger, runs his left palm over the right side of Ezra’s face, his left thumb brushing under Ezra’s right eye. “Come here, kiddo,” Kanan says, gathering Ezra into his side, careful of his injured arm. “I’m so sorry. It’s okay, shh,” Kanan murmurs, pulling Ezra close, pressing his lips briefly to Ezra’s forehead before cupping the back of his head in a protective palm, wrapping his other arm around Ezra’s back. “I’m okay now. I’m so sorry I woke you up. Let’s go back to sleep for a little longer, hm?”

Ezra burrows into Kanan’s body, stretches his legs out against Kanan’s, tucks his face against Kanan’s shoulder. Kanan waits until Ezra has stopped shaking, waits until the moment Ahsoka can feel Ezra slip back to sleep. Finally, he turns his head to acknowledge Ahsoka’s presence, dragging his fingers over Ezra’s hair. “Thank you,” he says softly. “For bringing me my padawan.”

“His feelings woke me,” Ahsoka says. “Be careful, Kanan Jarrus.” She projects the suggestion of sleep and safety, but she worries. Worries what the hell three padawans can do against the might of the Empire, against the dark forces she feels lurk ever closer. “I sense that your bond is deep, but it must also be calm, controlled, like –“

“A flowing, certain river,” Kanan finishes. His mouth quirks into what could be a smile. “My master used to say same the same thing.”

Kanan sighs. “I haven’t felt this connected to anyone since my master,” he admits. “Sometimes I really don’t know what I was thinking, taking a padawan who’s so old, who’s been through much karked-up shit already, when I wasn’t even a knight yet when everything –“ He sighs again, a long, pained breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Ahsoka smirks, despite herself. “That’s exactly what Ezra said,” she replies. “You’ll figure it out.”

Kanan closes his eyes, strokes Ezra’s hair. “Did you ever take a padawan?” Kanan asks a few minutes later, breaking the increasingly comfortable silence between them.

“No,” Ahsoka says. “I don’t think I ever could.”

“But I heard some amazing stories about you and General Skywalker during the war,” Kanan counters. “I bet you have so much to pass on.” He looks back down at Ezra, who is now fast asleep in his arms. “Ezra… needs a strong teacher.”

“He already has one,” Ahsoka replies. She thinks about falling asleep in Anakin’s arms, on foreign worlds at war, and runs through her mental list of all the reasons it would be dangerous to both herself and a padawan if she were to take one. She thinks of little Hedala Faardi, wonders what it would have been like to take her on. If having a padawan could have filled the yawning chasm of loss she feels.

Kanan shrugs.

“That is not my path,” Ahsoka says, hoping she sounds firm enough, not quite believing herself.

She climbs out of the chair and settles on the floor next to it, crossing her legs and tucking her chin to her chest. She tries not to look too closely the black hole that fills the place where her bond with Anakin used to be, tries to push away the whisper of warning dancing in the Force. “Rest,” she urges, slipping into meditation. “We have a little time.”

**Author's Note:**

> hello I'm v late to this party, as in, just started watching and only at the end of season 1, so I am pretty much positive this isn't canon compliant, but. my new feelings about Kanan Jarrus space dad and his son Ezra Bridger combined with my feelings about Ahsoka would notttt allow me to progress to s2 without writing this little scene, so. here it is.
> 
> my [tumblr](https://inconocible.tumblr.com/) is on hiatus, kind of, but I'm there.


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